


sugar-flavored idiots

by wingedpaki



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Bisexual Sokka (Avatar), First Kiss, Gay Zuko (Avatar), Idiots in Love, M/M, Modern AU, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, fluff and idiocy, fucking hell theyre so dumb, honestly the universe doesn’t matter they’re just 2 dumbasses doing dumbass things, no brain cells were involved in the writing of this fic, sokka uses memes to confess his feelings, some panicky moments but it’s soft in the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26571730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingedpaki/pseuds/wingedpaki
Summary: He sat up and shoved his phone at Zuko, who was curled up on the ratty couch a foot away. With a sigh, the tender dog-earing of Pride and Prejudice, and an affectionate eye-roll, Zuko turned to look at the fiftieth meme Sokka had shown him that evening.It was a four-panel comic, lightly compressed. The first panel featured a girl with a mouthful of dry cereal; the second featured another girl taking a sip of milk. In the third panel, both girls made eye contact, cheeks bulging with unswallowed food; and in the fourth, they leaned into a kiss.“The fuck?”“When they make out, cereal happens!” Sokka exclaimed, eyes swimming with stars. “A mouthful of cereal and a mouthful of milk creates two mouthfuls of the best soup known to man. I’m astral projecting here, dude. This is galaxy brain.”“This seems like a terrible idea.” Zuko stared, dumbfounded, at the comic. “And hold on—did you just call breakfast cereal a soup?”(or, in which Sokka’s contagious dumbassery turns out to be Zuko’s love language)
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 41
Kudos: 317





	sugar-flavored idiots

**Author's Note:**

> I saw the meme in question, was horrified by the logistics of a cereal kiss, and immediately pounded this out in a cumulative span of six hours to cope. 
> 
> This is small and fluffy, but it’s the first fic I’ve published in years—so please be gentle :) 
> 
> HUGE shoutout to my friend Sarah (greeksalad on AO3!! Go check her out!!) for beta-reading this! Her feedback on my writing was invaluable. <3

“Holy shit,” said Sokka, “this is fucking genius.”

Sokka was sprawled across what little floor space there was in Zuko’s cramped, dingy studio, a smattering of papers and colorful pens covering every surface within a five-foot radius. His sticker-caked laptop, displaying a half-finished essay last edited two hours ago, sat abandoned in a corner in favor of browsing memes on his phone. Zuko thought he looked nice that way—on his back in a ridden-up tank top, blue eyes blown wide and glinting—though he’d never admit it. What was there to admit? That he thought his friend was good-looking? It wasn’t an uncommon opinion; nearly everyone seemed drawn to him, despite the Crocs and horrible jokes and goofy smile. Zuko could appreciate the aesthetics of a muscled, charming man. What of it?

“This is the most enlightened thing I’ve ever seen,” Sokka continued. “I think I just reached Nirvana. Zuko, look at this.”

He sat up and shoved his phone at Zuko, who was curled up on the ratty couch a foot away. With a sigh, the tender dog-earing of Pride and Prejudice, and an affectionate eye-roll, Zuko turned to look at the fiftieth meme Sokka had shown him that evening. 

It was a four-panel comic, lightly compressed. The first panel featured a girl with a mouthful of dry cereal; the second featured another girl taking a sip of milk. In the third panel, both girls made eye contact, cheeks bulging with unswallowed food; and in the fourth, they leaned into a kiss.

“The fuck?”

“When they make out, cereal happens!” Sokka exclaimed, eyes swimming with stars. “A mouthful of cereal and a mouthful of milk creates two mouthfuls of the best soup known to man. I’m astral projecting here, dude. This is galaxy brain.”

“This seems like a terrible idea.” Zuko stared, dumbfounded, at the comic. “And hold on—did you just call breakfast cereal a soup?”

“Would you prefer I called it a dessert salad?”

“No!”

“Then admit it’s a soup! Okay, but the point is, dude, that this is ingenious. Imagine the possibilities! One person stuffs their mouth with eggs, the other person stuffs their mouth with bacon, they kiss and bam! Breakfast! One person drinks water, the other person eats coffee grounds—make out and you’ve got coffee! It’s completely revolutionary.”

Sokka looked at his phone, gears turning almost audibly in his head. Dark lashes fluttered, lips pinkened where chewed. Stray hairs danced across dimly-lit cheekbones. Zuko was inches from boy-induced—-platonic, completely platonic—nuclear meltdown when Sokka lowered his phone, exhaled forcefully. Bore burning winter blue eyes into short-circuiting amber.

“I will never know mental peace again until I try this,” he proclaimed, and Zuko was _gone_.

“What are you implying?” he choked, hoping that the shitty garage-sale lamp—his one semi-functional light source—was busted enough to shroud his face in darkness. His good cheek burned red-hot. Trick of the lighting—dear Agni, let Sokka brush it off as a trick of the lighting.

“I’m not implying anything, dude. I’m being pretty explicit here. I will die an agonizing death if I don’t experience a cereal kiss, and since you’re the only person h-here—” Sokka’s voice caught in his throat. The confidence seemed to drain from his body until he was all stiff shoulders and avoidant eyes and fidgeting fingers. “It’s for science.” 

Zuko bit the inside of his cheek hard, just shy of drawing blood. What the _fuck_ was happening? Sokka had barged into his apartment that afternoon with an essay due at midnight and an excuse about “needing a quiet space to focus”. He’d spent the better part of the day on the floor, thinking aloud and typing and procrastinating and doodling in the margins of his notebooks—constantly distracting Zuko with memes and conversation when all he wanted to do was get some goddamn reading done. And Zuko, ever weak to his friend’s lopsided little grin and cocked brow, allowed it to happen. Now it was ten o’clock at night, the essay was forgotten, and Sokka was suggesting that they swap milky, Froot-Loop-flavored spit.

“For science,” he agreed, telling himself ten different stories of how he was only doing this to shut Sokka up / to see if it worked / to prove it was a terrible idea / to have a funny story to share with their friends—and believing none of them.

“Hell yeah!” As quickly as it’d left, the confidence rushed back into Sokka’s body. Shoulders relaxed, bright eyes gleamed. “Where do you keep your cereal?”

“Leftmost cabinet, with the rest of the junk food. Milk is in the fridge.”

As footsteps receded into the kitchen, Zuko held his head in his hands and _spiraled_. What had he gotten himself into? This was going to be a disaster. Their faces, their clothes, the floor—everything—would be covered in soggy cereal and saliva. Sokka would laugh, call him ‘dude’, and they’d clean up together, and Zuko would forever live with the excruciating knowledge of how Sokka’s lips felt against his—

He pressed his fingers against the rough skin of his left eye, grounding himself in the dull ache. There was no going back now.

“No Cap’ N Crunch? Not even Frosted Flakes? Your cereal game is seriously lacking, bro.”

“I have Reese’s Puffs.”

“What? That’s loser cereal! I wouldn’t feed that shit to Professor Pakku. Tui and La, man, one, of these days we have to go cereal shopping so I can introduce you to the good stuff. Oh, hey—I found some Lucky Charms!”

“It might be expired.”

“It is. By a week. Wanna take the gamble?” 

“We’re _not_ eating expired cereal, Sokka.”

“Oh, come on! It’s the only decent shit you have. It’ll give you, like, three diseases either way. Have you seen the amount of processed-ass corn and diabetes juice they put in this shit? A week is nothing for a product barely categorizable as food.”

“If I get food poisoning, you’re paying my medical bills.”

“Deal! And if you die, Toph is legally allowed to assassinate me.”

“Deal.”

Zuko stood on shaky legs and shuffled over to Sokka, who had the beat-up Lucky Charms box in one hand and a half-gallon of milk in the other.

“You wanna be milk or cereal?” Sokka asked.

“Cereal.”

Zuko didn’t trust himself not to dribble milk all over Sokka’s shirt before their lips even met. The Lucky Charms box was suddenly in his hands, and coherent thought _vanished_. 

The only things left were his stomach’s twisting and knotting, the pounding of his heart against his ribs, the weakness in his knees. He reached a hand into the box, pulled out sugary oats and vibrant marshmallows. Stole a glance at Sokka, who was uncapping the milk. Tried to remember how to breathe, put a handful of cereal into his mouth, felt the sugar sizzle and the marshmallows melt. Noticed how warm his cheeks were. Noticed how warm Sokka’s cheeks were. How flushed his lips were, lightly washing white as he sipped right out of the carton. The cereal box—on the counter, along with the milk. Zuko’s hands, Zuko’s body—moving toward Sokka. Sokka moving towards him, cheeks tense and lips slightly parted. Mere inches between them. Nervous amber upon nervous blue, a thousand voices screaming in Zuko’s head, a heartbeat that stampeded, muscles tense enough to break bones, more anxiety than he thought he’d ever—

They kissed.

It was as terrible as expected.

Sokka managed to get some of the milk into Zuko’s mouth, but significant amounts ran down their chins and soaked into their shirts instead. It took a good five seconds to figure out noses and teeth, and thrice as long for Zuko to move some cereal—now soggy with spit—into Sokka’s mouth. Tongue had not been part of the plan, but apparently Sokka found it necessary to access more of the marshmallowy goo behind Zuko’s teeth, so the kiss deepened, cold and sweet and sticky. Half-chewed mush and copious amounts of spit were swapped. The entire experience was _disgusting_.

The last of the mouth-cereal dissolved after a minute or two. Sokka pulled away when all that remained was milk’s slight tang, wiping his chin with a stiff hand. He looked some unholy combination of stunned, amazed, regretful, satisfied, pained, and hopeful—and a little doe-eyed with something Zuko couldn’t quite pin down.

“Well,” he started, clumsily. “That was interesting,”

“That was one of your worst ideas.” Zuko removed his hands from Sokka’s shoulders, dimly wondering how they got there as he relearned how to breathe. His heart was still racing, his good cheek was still warm. His mouth was sweet and boy-flavored.

“So mouth cereal is a bust,” blabbered Sokka, face unusually red as he scrambled to put the milk and Lucky Charms away, “but I’m telling you. Mouth coffee. That’s the future. Milk gets all acidic and gross from the heat of your mouth, and cereal gets waterlogged and nasty, but those things are a benefit for coffee. The water would warm up in your mouth, and spit could help coax the flavor out if you have the coffee grounds in, like, a teabag or something.” 

“Are you propositioning—”

“No! I’m not! I’m not propositioning anything! I’m just—” He sighed, eyes downcast. “I’m sorry.”

Zuko was silent, frantically searching for words that wouldn’t come. Sokka kept talking.

“It was a horrible idea. I shouldn’t have been so insistent, I shouldn’t have pressured you. You probably didn’t want to kiss me anyway, let alone kiss me with a mouth full of Lucky Charms. If you want me to leave—”

“I liked it.”

“You— I— you what?”

“I liked it,” Zuko insisted, before he had a chance to overthink. “I liked kissing you. And if we could kiss again, that, um. Would be nice, I think. But preferably without cereal this time. That was a little gross.”

Sokka’s expression was a little too indecipherable for a little too long. The thoughts started _rushing_.

He’d _fucked up_. He’d fucked up colossally by saying he wanted to kiss Sokka—fucked up more than he had when he’d criticized his father for cutting his employees’ wages, fucked up worse than when his face met fire, because that time he’d just lost his face and his eye and his sleep at night, this time he was losing his best friend. This time he was losing the boy who meant more than almost anyone to him.his time, he was losing the boy he might like a little (who he was hopelessly, desperately, torturously in love with) all because he hadn’t kept his stupid fucking mouth shut. Sokka hated him now. He had to. He would never speak to Zuko again, never smile at him again, never glance at him with that heart-stopping warmth again. He’d tell all of their friends—Katara, Aang, Toph, Suki, probably even Mai and Azula and Ty Lee—that Zuko was a pervert who tried to turn innocent, fun mouth-cereal into something disgusting and unwelcome. Sokka and Suki had only recently broken up—how horrible of Zuko to try and get with a man who was still processing heartbreak! All of his friends would leave him, too. It’s what he deserved, wasn’t it? He was always fucking up, always making mistakes. Aang and his friends had made a grave error in forgiving him. Eventually they’d see his true identity as a fuckup, the lucky-to-be-born failure child—and what better way for them to realize it than this? Getting rejected by his crush of three years? It was the sick, ironic demise he deserved—

“Zuko,” Sokka said, impossibly soft and sweet for someone who must hate his guts.

“You okay?”

The world blurred behind hot tears. Zuko wiped his eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“The fuck,” Sokka breathed, “are you sorry for?”

Before Zuko could process those words, strong hands pulled him close and hot lips pressed into his.

“Don’t apologize,” Sokka murmured against his mouth. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for so long. Of course we can kiss again. And again and again.”

“I thought— I thought you wouldn’t want me,” Zuko gasped.

“Why wouldn’t I want you?” Sokka pulled back and gave him that doe-eyed, searching look that Zuko could never understand. He recognized it now—it was the look Mai would give Ty Lee in the months before they started dating, the look Aang gave Katara when they had their first kiss. “I didn’t orchestrate a makeout in the name of science just to hear you say I didn’t want you.”

“You deliberately planned for our first kiss to be full of Lucky Charms?”

“Not like that! The meme just like, showed up on my Instagram feed and everything kinda fell into place. It seemed like a reasonable way to segue into admitting my feelings for you, and for you to maybe admit the feelings that I’m sixty-percent sure are there but might just be in my head.”

“You didn’t imagine them,” Zuko admitted. Then, almost inaudibly, “Why me?”

“Why not?”

“Because you have so many other options. Don’t settle. Kiss someone who deserves you.”

“I’m kissing someone who _I_ don’t deserve.” There was the lightest press of soft lips against pale skin. “You’re absolutely amazing, dude.”

“Don’t call me ‘dude’ while you kiss me,” he choked.

Sokka kissed his mouth. “No promises, dude.”

A few warm, molasses-slow seconds dripped by, where the only things that mattered were the mingling of body heats and the closeness of mouths. Zuko found Sokka’s hands, strong and sure on his waist, to be the most comforting touch he’d had in years. Eventually, he spoke.

“Hey Sokka?”

“Yeah?”

“Can we… keep kissing?”

“That was pretty much the plan.”

“I mean… can we kiss tomorrow, and the day after that, and around our friends? And go on dates, and hold hands in public, and exchange hoodies, and—”

“Be boyfriends?” Sokka’s grin was audible.

“Yeah. Be... be boyfriends.”

“Of course.” Gentle lips brushed across Zuko’s nose, then over his cheek. “I’d be honored to have a boyfriend as pretty and smart and talented and wonderful as you.”

“Wait,” Zuko started, pulling away suddenly. Sokka’s hands dropped from his waist.

“What?”

“Your essay. It’s due in ninety minutes.”

“Fuck the essay.”

They kissed again. It tasted like sugar, and felt like _home_.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Comments and suggestions are always appreciated. Zukka nation, I hope I served you well!


End file.
